Gordon Brown’s followers claim that the media’s trivialisation of politics writes off good leaders who fail to shine on TV. But politicians do need people skills
It’s all a matter of personalities. There are no significant policy splits between Labour factions, still less ideological differences. Ministers and MPs fear they will lose the election because Gordon Brown doesn’t come over to voters as sufficiently touchy-feely. He has a mighty intellect, an unmatched grasp of policy detail, great emotional depths and a lifelong commitment to improving the workers’ lot. Therefore, he has the potential to be a great leader if only people would let him.
But, unlike the Tory leader, he isn’t enough of a PR smoothie. This is the fault of TV and the tabloid press. They reduce politics to trivialities and sound bites and voters’ judgements of political leaders to whether they’d like to go out for a beer with them. This personalisation of politics is a Bad Thing. Politics, as Tony Benn says, should be ’about ishoos, not pershonalities’.
That is the conventional wisdom among large sections of the Labour Party. But the analysis – and the Benn view of politics – is flawed. Politics is not and never was primarily about issues. Personalities have always played the dominant role. Only for a brief period, between the beginning of mass democracy and the advent of electronic media, did issues and ideology, as expressed through the party system, play an important part.
Politics is about people skills, not ideas, about rubbing along with colleagues, inspiring followers, defusing anger and hurt pride, turning on charm or instilling fear as circumstances dictate, making compromises, forming alliances, taking decisions and convincing everybody that you’ll stick with them. If political leaders can’t do at least some of these things, they will fail, however good their grasp of policy. At one time, it was the governing elite who picked out the men (as they then always were) with the right qualities.
That practice persisted into the democratic era, with Labour’s judgemental networks being in the trade unions and big city local authorities. The electorate was wooed through broad-brush policy packages, designed to convince them that a leader and his party would act in their interests.
Now, through television and YouTube, voters can make their own judgements about whether politicians are made of the right stuff. They are often wrong, but no more so than the inner circle who meet the candidates in the flesh.
Tony Blair succeeded because he was charming and plausible, even though there was always a flavour of the wide boy about him. Despite the absence of any dedicated party following and his lack of affinity with most Labour Party members’ aspirations, Blair convinced even the most independent and sceptical MPs that he could make everything come right, just as he convinced the voters.
When the Blair magic stopped working, Brown enjoyed a few months of popularity. But Labour minister and long-time Brown camp follower Douglas Alexander put his finger on it when, in 2007, he told Peter Watt, Labour’s general secretary (whose memoirs are being serialised in the Mail on Sunday), why there should be an early general election. ‘We’ve spent ten years working with Gordon and we don’t like him. The more the public get to know him, the less they will like him too.’
The Brown camp tried to convince the rest of the world (particularly journalists) that there were two Gordons: the dour public one the TV-watching masses saw, and the relaxed private one – witty, undogmatic, likeable. In other words, a Gordon you’d like to have a beer with. Almost every profile of him published before 2008 mentioned this supposed contrast. But, for most colleagues, the second Brown never existed.
Among an exclusive circle of intimates, Brown could share beers, josh over football and even tolerate disagreements. Surrounded by a tight, loyal and inward-looking gang, he was confident and comfortable. A leader needs wider appeal than that.
So, yes, Gordon Brown has failed as prime minister because he doesn’t ‘come across well’ on television. But nothing has really changed: he would have failed in any political era.
Peter Wilby is a former editor of the New Statesman
